Products > Test Equipment
Why did Tektronix stop making the great scopes?
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Wuerstchenhund:

--- Quote from: Rupunzell on December 28, 2014, 12:28:56 am ---If possible purchase a classic tek O'scope like a 547 or even a 465, get a tek service manual then proceed to cal or repair it. These classic tek scopes are excellent teaching tools. There is MUCH that can be learned by working of these classic tek instruments.
The circuit design, mechanical design and overall consideration for serviceability and longevity was second to none. Back then tek built stuff to last, to be easily repaired and to stay in cal, in service for a very, very long time. Much of this is no longer true today for a host of reasons.
--- End quote ---

I'm sorry but that sounds like a lot of tosh. A 547, really? Don't get me wrong, this was a great scope in 1968, and it's still a nice collectible for someone interested in vintage T&M gear, but no sane person can reasonably suggest that this is a great every-day scope or techning tool half a century later. You must be kidding, right?

For example, your claim that "the circuit design, mechanical design and overall consideration for serviceability and longevity was second to none" which is bogus. The epoxy HV transformers in these scopes was a pretty poor design which attracted moisture, which over time killed (if I remember right, it's been a very long time since I had one) the oscillator driver valve. The valves in these scopes also didn't appreciate short operating cycles, it took forever to stabilize, and the overall MTBF was pretty low, which is one of the main reason why Tek went from valves to transistors. The 465 runs circles around the 500 Series in terms of reliability, which is still worse than what can be expected even from older DSOs.

Your claim that these scopes were designed "to stay in cal, in service for a very, very long time" is tosh as well. Despite the low bandwidth of these scopes they actually needed regular re-adjustment because of the aging (which was accelerated by the heat pumped out by all the valves) of many components. The 500 Series was pretty bad, later scopes built on transistors and ICs where much more long-term stable as they didn't produce a similar amount of heat and thermal stress. The 465 is much better than the 500 Series, but still has many analog components that age and shift the calibration over time, which is much less of a problem for any newer DSO because they automatically compensate for the shift of the few analog components they have.

And as a teching tool, serious? Unless you want to train museum curators the idea of using a 547 or 465 for teching EEs is bonkers. These scopes tech them very little that is relevance to a job as EE in 2015, these boat anchors are useless dealing with any of the complex signals modern technology works with. Using them as teaching tools would be a huge dis-service to your students because the time wasted on teaching how life was in the 60's could have been used for actually useful stuff like how digital scopes work, what their limits are and how to employ them for signal analysis. It may be nice for a short demo on how life was back then but that's about it.


--- Quote ---The price one pays for smaller, lighter, portable and all that (modern DSO) comes with a cost and it is not initially apparent.
--- End quote ---

What price? Not buring 1kW for a primitive 50MHz scope which takes 20mins to stabilize to become usable? Not having mechanical switches which corrode and fail over time? Not having to re-adjust tons of analog trimmers and potentiometers to compensate for the shift due to aging (something modern DSOs compensate for automatically through self-adjustment)? Not needing to hunt for obsolete components which are out of production for decades? Not having to guess what the signal parameters are because the modern scopes can actually analyze it?

I'm honeslty curious, what is this non-apparent price one pays for modern scopes you're talking about?


--- Quote ---I'm still using a tek 7104 at work, there is nothing modern that can replace it for the work I'm doing.
--- End quote ---

No offense, but unless your work is fixing vintage scopes or doing some simple analog audio work this says much more about you being stuck in the past than about the qualities of the 7000 Series.
Wuerstchenhund:

--- Quote from: don on December 28, 2014, 08:26:33 am ---This is an interesting thread.  The topic is "why did Tek stop making great scopes".  Great scopes in what category? True that Tek is not leading in the $300k tier.  But at the low end,  the MDO3000 is very hard to beat.  I would say class leading in it's tier, especially with it's integrated  SA (3GHz capture BW!)    More so when 3GHz SA was free with last promotion.
--- End quote ---

The MDO3k are interesting scopes, at least on paper. But they are apparently still pretty buggy (I know two labs who bought a few of them). The standard 100MHz SA bandwidth however is pathetic, and the 3GHz option is pretty expensive. It's also only useful if you don't need to use scope and SA at the same time.


--- Quote ---I have dozens of scopes to choose from for my day job.  Typically 1GHz is more than needed.   My everyday scope is an MDO4000.  If I was greedy and were to  pick from our lab  I'd choose  a lecory 8zi first.  Though I do not need high bw for day to day so would likely pass to get a simpler probing solution.  Next I would choose a tek 7000/4000 or mdo3000, followed by an agilent (4000/6000/7000/9000/90000).
--- End quote ---

Sometimes I can choose what to buy, sometimes not (depending on where I work), but if I have to choose then for an entry level scope I'd probably go for a Keysight DSOX2k/3k or a Hameg HMO3000. The 4 channel Rigols (DS1000z, DS4000) are just too buggy and Rigol's support is still questionable. The Tek TBS1000 is a bad joke, and the MSO/DPO2k is slow and buggy.

For everything above that I'd just go with LeCroy. Their bought-in low end scopes (WaveAce, WaveJet) are pretty pathetic but the WaveSurfer and higher scopes are LeCroy developed, and these scopes are usually the best that's available in that class. And not to forget that for some stuff LeCroy is the only game in town anyways. Keysight makes great scopes but their UI is horrible (I've worked with all the Agilent scopes up to the 90k Series), they lack many of the capabilities I can get with LeCroy, and they are regularly more expensive than LeCroy. In addition, LeCroy supports all their scopes for 7 years after end of production, and on a "best effort" basis long after that (they still repair the 9300 Series which was EOL'd in 1998). With Agilent we had issues in the past with kit which was only a bit over 4 years old.

Tek I would not even consider. I agree that the MDO3k is a pretty unique scope, but the rest of the offerings are pretty poor. Tek's low-end is a joke, and the high end is stuck at a level where the competition was around 2009. Processing on the 7k and 70k scopes is pretty slow as well, which is embarrassing in that class and price range. And they are still more expensive than LeCroy.


--- Quote ---So from my perspective, Tek scopes are still very competitive and I see they are preferred by a very large percentage of my peers at the low to mid end.  They need to beef up their high end scopes but low end is looking very good, mid range is still meeting needs.

--- End quote ---

I can't agree. As said above, the MDO3k is nice but the limitations in that scope make it attractive to very few customers only. The Tek low end is pathetic, and aside from the idea to stick a spectrum analyzer into a scope they haven't come up with something remarkable for a very long time. It also doesn't help that (according to some customers who were long-term Tek buyers) their support has followed the "Danaher Business System" (i.e. it's cut down) and their sales staff now remind me to used car salesmen.

There's very little that Tek does in scopes that others don't do better. In fact, the whole scope line seems to be a re-hash of old technology. But that's signature Danaher.
HighVoltage:
Many places I go in Germany in to large factories and laboratories and I find that they have all upgraded to Keysight scopes in the last few years and not Tektronix. One of the reasons behind this is a terrible Tektronix customer service in Germany and on the other hand an excellent customer service by Keysight (Agilent) 
Wuerstchenhund:

--- Quote from: HighVoltage on December 28, 2014, 02:13:59 pm ---Many places I go in Germany in to large factories and laboratories and I find that they have all upgraded to Keysight scopes in the last few years and not Tektronix. One of the reasons behind this is a terrible Tektronix customer service in Germany and on the other hand an excellent customer service by Keysight (Agilent)

--- End quote ---

That mirrors what I'm seeing in the UK (and some other countries I visit through work). In the rare case I see a newer Tek scope in a lab I'm usually told that this has been bought because of management or a corporate buyer with no clue thought "buying Tek is like buying IBM - it won't get you fired". I yet have to meet an EE who actually wants a modern Tek, or prefers it to scopes from other manufacturers.
LabSpokane:
What specifically do the high end Lecroy scopes offer that is unique?  (I don't know the brand at all.)
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